How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [60]
Benevolence or ethnic cleansing? Paradoxically, it was a joining of the two—which is to say: politics.
Jefferson’s effort had only partial success. Following the War of 1812, Congress appropriated funds to induce more Cherokees to move. Sequoyah was among the delegation of Cherokees who received a written offer from General Andrew Jackson. Sequoyah had fought under Jackson in a Cherokee regiment (the Cherokees having placed their bets on the Americans in response to their enemy, the Red Stick Creeks, having bet on the British). Jackson did not know Sequoyah, who had only been a private during the war. Nevertheless Sequoyah knew something of Jackson and was sufficiently regarded in his tribe to have been included in the delegation to meet with him. Jackson discovered, however, that the delegates were not high-level leaders. He reported to the secretary of war that “as the Cherokee delegates seemed doubtful as to the extent of their powers, this treaty has been concluded subject to the ratification of the Cherokee nation.”
A year later, Jackson returned with a more aggressive agreement. Though Sequoyah was not a party to this treaty, its acceptance altered his life. This 1817 treaty offered a land swap in which the United States would “give to that part of the Cherokee nation, on the Arkansas, as much land on said river and White River as [the United States] have or may hereafter receive from the Cherokee nation east of the Mississippi.” To Sequoyah, it seemed like a relatively good deal. Under the leadership of Oolooteka, known also as John Jolly, Sequoyah relocated to the area of present-day Russellville, Arkansas. Other Cherokee chiefs opposed the treaty and bitterly resented that Oolooteka allowed the federal government to divide the Cherokee leadership openly and geographically.5 They sent a delegation to Washington, instructing them:
1817 Cherokee treaty
On your arrival at Washington city, you will deliver our letter to our elder brother, the Secretary of War.… You will state that … we have of late years been subjected to the control of the minority of our nation.… Toolchair and others were sent to meet the commissioners with positive instructions to dispose of no lands but, contrary to his instructions, he entered into a conditional treaty … [ratified] not by the whole Cherokee nation, as expressed by General Jackson in the ratification of that treaty but, on the contrary, there were six or seven headmen present who objected to the ratification of the treaty.6
The federal government, however, having achieved its objective, declared the treaty finished.
Sequoyah spent the next several years working, often with his daughter, on his longtime interest, the development of a set of symbols that would represent spoken Cherokee syllables. These efforts did not take place in a vacuum. During this era, missionaries were trying to develop a system that would transliterate the Cherokee language using Roman letters, as had been done by other missionaries with some Canadian and Alaskan tribes. Sequoyah too employed Roman letters, but in ways that bore no relation to their former role (indeed, they were often configured upside down or backward), and he invented additional symbols. Unlike the competing transliteration system of the missionaries, Sequoyah’s syllabic approach was an instant success.
Except for the moment between “instant” and “success” when Sequoyah and his daughter were accused by their clan’s shamans of fraudulently claiming magical powers—a serious offense. The two were placed in separate locations, and Sequoyah was told to use his magic pencil to make a particular statement. His interrogators then took this message to his daughter and asked her to tell them what it was.